Top 10 Posts of 2011, Part One

It's been a pretty good year on this blog. Started in 2009 as a way to share advertising insights and finds with my friends, colleagues and interested clients, it has picked up a respectable international readership — including many of the mainstream ad bloggers I consider best practisers.

The year's almost done, so I'll share the 2011 posts that generated the most interest online.

#10 Suck it, haters!

One of the cause communities from which I've gotten great support has been the so-called "lactivists". I am a very vocal proponent of breastfeeding as the preferred form on infant nutrition, and I have railed against prudes who find it obscene.

So I was especially pleased when Australian Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr and her actor husband Orlando Bloom announced the birth of their first child with a beautifully intimate photo of mother and child.

There was some controversy around the picture, but Ms. Kerr kept up the good work. And to disprove the theory that breastfeeding somehow leads to sag, she recently did a tasteful nude photoshoot for Industrie magazine. After all, motherhood is not the end of a woman's sexuality.

#9 Christina Hendricks celebrates Christmas with a product placement

While Miranda Kerr's personal photo celebrated her motherhood, this more recent shoot shared by Mad Men's Christina Hendricks simply used her enormous boobs to promote whisky.

Ms. Hendricks once told The Daily Mail, "If there’s anything to be learned from me it’s that I’m learning to celebrate what I was born with, even though it’s sometimes been inconvenient."

And intimidating. But as with any post dealing with sex or the female form, this one proved the old adage that anything featuring boobs, bowsers or babies will always draw eyeballs.

#8  1 in 5 teenagers will experiment with art

This refreshingly non-mammary campaign by the Philbrook Museum of Art is one of the great viral successes of the latter part of 2011. It just goes to show that big budgets are not needed when you have a really big idea.

It may not be the first time a campaign has satirized the War on Drugs, but it is certainly one of the better executions.

#7 Egyptian blogger exposes herself for freedom

The keywords I chose to define my content are: "Social, Cause, Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Human Rights, Sex, Sexism, Politics, Activism, Science, Fashion, Media". This post about the Egyptian feminist and atheist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy's nude blog protest probably meets all of those criteria.

At just 20 years old, Ms. Elmahdy is at an age where online exhibitionism, in the west, hardly raises an eyebrow. But in post-Tahir Egypt, where a human rights struggle has turned into a violent conflict over the religious future of the country, she has exposed herself to criticism, abuse, and the possibility of being murdered for her beliefs. I hope she has a safe 2012.

#6 The stupid Skittles porn spoof ad you've already seen

With a blog title like that, you wouldn't expect this to be a top post. But since the internet is for porn, people tune in just to see the sex. The stupid, unsanctioned, Skittles bukkake sex.


Skittles - Newlyweds - Dir. Cousins [Not affiliated with Wrigley or Skittles. Contains explicit content not suitable for minors] from Cousins on Vimeo.


Contrary to popular belief, I post about more than sex. But these are the posts that get the most interest. This particular one was part of my "F'd Ad Fridays" feature, in which I rattle off the weirdest, sickest and stupidest ad campaigns and pop culture memes I've bookmarked throughout the week.

Well, that's it for the first half of the list. I'll post the top five tomorrow.